March 2007

BBC and YouTube Partner
Another day, another content deal as the UK National broadcaster, the BBC, sign a deal with YouTube/Google to make a selection of their content available on YouTube on an non-exclusive basis.
Two deals have been done, one with the BBC, the other BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC. Financial terms of the deal aren’t being discussed at all.
There will be three YouTube ‘channels’ under the deal. Two of them are live already, BBC and BBCWorldwide, with BBCWorld to follow ‘shortly.’
BBC is very much in the YouTube model, full of rough camcorder diary pieces, and behind the scenes shots giving an ‘insight’ into the workings of the BBC. Currently there are 31 pieces going back one month.
BBCWorldwide is labelled as “The best of British TV” and currently has 78 video pieces on it and contains a ton on Top Gear, Attenborough and a smattering of comedy shows like The Mighty Boosh and Catherine Tate. Will also “include a limited amount of advertising.”
BBCWorld isn’t up and running yet, but when it is, will only be available to YouTube viewers outside the UK. It will be advertising-funded.
Mark Thompson, Director-General of the BBC, likes the project, “The partnership provides both a creative outlet for a range of short-form content from BBC programme makers and the opportunity to learn about new forms of audience behaviour.
What’s it like?
Surprisingly for the BBC the quality of the video isn’t what it could be. Quite a change from the days when quality was everything.
Interestingly, fans of BBC content are barred from showing their fav ditties on any other sites as “Embedding disabled by request.” If the BBC has requested this, or YouTube isn’t clear. It’s more likely given they’ve paid the BBC for their content, and we imagine that they damn well want viewers visiting their site to see the videos.
This is great for the BBC as they get to distribute their content widely (fitting their remit) while not having to spend any money on distribution of the content, in fact receiving payment for the privilege.
2 March, 2007
Sky Remote Record Via The Internet
Sky has gradually been increasing the number of ways to program your Sky+ and HD boxes to record. The latest, via the Internet, joins interactive via mobile phone and the rather convoluted mobile text message services.
In those situations where Sky subscribers find they haven’t set their boxes to record the latest episode of Celebrity Trouser Press, and can’t live without seeing it, relief will now be at hand.
By grabbing the closest (compatible) Web browser, Sky subscribers bring up the Sky site, login and take themselves to TV Listings. The next seven days of TV programming will be brought up, and, when Celebrity Trouser Press is found, by clicking on the title, the description of the programme and its options are brought up.
All that is needed to program the box is a click on Remote Record, and a subsequent confirmation to send the request to the box nestled under the TV at home.
Sky tell us that it can take up to 30 mins for the programming request to reach its destination, but it’s highly likely to be significantly quicker than that.
Strangely they have decided to impose a limit of 10 recording request a day via the Internet – but, in our view, anyone who need to remotely programme their box more than that needs help anyway. Those afflicted can reach for their mobile to carry on programming until their thumbs bleed.
Well that’s it. The remote programming circle is now complete. All ways to program your Sky+ box are now available … err, except the direct brain method. We await the call from Sky on that one.
Sky Remote Record
2 March, 2007
IPTV Growth To Boost Video Market To $277Bn By 2010: iSupply
Research house iSupply are predicting that IPTV will be boosting the reveneue generated by the premium video services market from its current level of less than $200Bn to a whopping $277Bn by 2010.
Their definition of the premium video services market takes in pay-TV, mobile video, DVD, broadband video and theatre/box office receipts, but when advertising revenues are added, the total market reaches a stunning $370Bn.
iSupply see IPTV growing at frankly amazing rates. In 2005 they saw IPTV worth $681m and, with their estimate of a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 103 percent (!), see it reaching a calculator-busting £23.5Bn in 2010.
It appears that they see the public’s willingness to pay for content expanding significantly. Strange, but we and our other tech-aware pals are finding ourselves just not watching that much mainstream content – even if it is available on-demand.
That aside, iSupply see the battle royal between two big, hairy beasts – the current pay-TV world of direct-to-home satellite and digital and analogue cable TV services – and the telcos who will be pushing quad-play.
On the physical format side, iSupply point out that DVD sales are slowing, and will continue to do so, with the decline over the next 3-4 years being as much as 15 percent to 20 percent.
One very interesting point that is raised by them is
With most movie libraries and television series already on DVD, Hollywood studios are generating more than half of their revenues from DVDs—and are running out of new content to sell, making this an issue of paramount importance to them. One cause of the DVD sales deceleration is the fact that consumers have become more price-sensitive, believing that the average DVD cost of $20 is too expensive, especially compared to renting.
It’s not clear where this leaves Blu-Ray and HD-DVD – both on the price of the media (which is expected to be higher than DVD) and on the material that is available. Given Hollywood’s slow ability to make new material, and that most of it will have been sold on DVD already – it’s not clear if the new formats will help them.
Information on Premium Video Services Market report
1 March, 2007
Kendra Initiative Cross-Media Summit for Content Discovery
The Kendra Initiative is hosting a Cross-Media Summit about Content Delivery next week, on Friday 9th March in London.
The full day event, running at the Frontline Club, is billed as “The Strategy, Technology and Business Case for Content Description, Visibility, Search and Discovery.”
The event is aiming to tackle one of Digital-Lifestyles hobby horses – In a sea of infinite content, how do you, as a willing content consumer, locate the content you want to use? As Peter Buckingham, Head Of Distribution and Exhibition, UK Film Council puts it, “The biggest threat is obscurity.”
The approach of this free-to-attend event is from the content owners perspective, looking at what is the weakness of current metadata standards; if they can be adapted to work better; if not, what is the appetite for more metadata standards for cross-media description?
Metadata standard are all very well, but often live within a bubble of non-implementation. The need for metadata-creation tools and how to persuade the industry to use them will also be covered.
We spoke to Daniel Harris (mug shot above), founder of Kendra, “It’s all about making things work, making the open marketplace work together. We’re really pleased to see how many people are coming along to it, creating a universal meta data.”
“As with all industries that involve connecting people, some people [involved in this] gain from there being a problem, but people are seeing that they can work outside their industry sector. This is a cross-industry problem that we’re trying to solve.”
So far around fifty people have signed up including representatives from important players such as Patrick Attallah, CEO, ISAN (International Standard Audiovisual Number); Keith Hill, Head of R&D, MCPS-PRS Alliance; Mark Stuart, Principal Engineer, Pioneer Digital Design; Iain McNay, Board Member, AIM (Association of Independent Music) and Chairman, Cherry Red Records; Rich Lappenbusch, Director, Microsoft Entertainment and Board Member, DDEX (Digital Data Exchange).
Being tech driven, those not able to physically attend will be able to hook in via Instant messaging and Skype.
The event will be free and sponsored by Makeni.
Kendra Initiative Cross-Media Summit for Content Discovery
1 March, 2007
Ms Pac Man Hits The iPod
By way of a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the ever-popular Ms Pac-Man video game, Namco are releasing a version of it to run on fifth-generation iPods, made available to punters via the iTunes store.
The download is £3.99 in the UK, which would have got you forty plays of the arcade version when it was first released, in 1982.
To maximise your feeling of getting good value, not only do you get four maze designs and 256 maze levels, you also get retro art from the original arcade cabinet and a tutorial level. There’s also the four intermissions, or Acts, between the maze changes.
As ever, Wikipedia provides huge amount of info on Ms Pac Man including giving the Official Succession of Verified Ms. Pac-Man World Champions. These start in the year of the game arrival, with Rick Greenwasser of Kirksville, Missouri getting an impressive 130,300 and end with an amazing 933,580 racked up by Abdner Ashman at Apollo Amusements, Pompano Beach, FL on 6 April 6, 2006.
The straight Pac Man has been available on iTunes since last year.
Ms Pac Man on iTunes
1 March, 2007